"Russia strengthens NATO surveillance in the Baltic Sea and carries out major military reform," the Military Intelligence and safety Service (MIDD) reported, assessing Russia's military activities close Latvia.
The threat assessment and last year's activity study published by the services state that Russia is carrying out force demonstrations and provocations specified as unauthorised airspace violations, aggressive approaches to NATO associate States' aircraft and ships, thereby expanding the hazard of accidental incidents.
These provocations are most likely intended to intimidate and test a possible opponent. At the same time, efforts to discredit the consequence and defence capacity of countries in the region cannot be excluded. MIDD points out that Russia is undergoing military reform, which aims to increase the number of its armed forces from 1 to 1 and a half million soldiers. The most crucial changes are planned in the strategical western direction.
"It is likely to take respective years, possibly even a decade, to accomplish the full objectives of the reform, but the Russian armed forces on the border with Latvia are expected to begin to increase as the strength of the war in Ukraine declines," reported. At the same time, MIDD stresses that Russia, under the current circumstances, has no military capacity to carry out another ground operation at strategical level.
The intelligence service reveals that as part of the Russian Armed Forces improvement in 2024. The Western Military territory adjacent to the Latvian border was reorganized to make Leningrad and Moscow Military Districts. This is Russia's formal consequence to the accession of Finland and Sweden to NATO. MIDD besides notes that, in parallel with the war in Ukraine, Russia has at least formally begun forming fresh units and reforming existing ones in accordance with its declared plan to improvement its armed forces.
The intelligence study explains that the creation or expansion of fresh units does not yet mean a real increase in forces close the borders of Latvia, as most Russian military resources are inactive being diverted to Ukraine. MIDD besides explains that in the average to long word Russia will be increasingly hard to return to the peace economy – this in turn creates interior request to keep aggressive abroad policy and proceed arms.
Source: LSM.lv
BIS improvement – survey Bulletin
